A private real-estate management company charging a standard 5% fee on MTAA’s $3.945 million non-tax income would generate only $197,262 in revenue and keep operating expenses under $140,000 — yet MTAA’s actual costs are 87 times higher, subsidized by your taxes.

 

MTAA Board of Directors – Qualifications Comparison (Current Term: December 2025 – November 2026)

The five-member MTAA Board is 100% appointed (3 City seats by the Mayor with City Council approval; 2 County seats by Shawnee County Commissioners). Kansas statute (K.S.A. 27-330) requires only that City appointees be Topeka registered voters and County appointees be Shawnee County residents living outside Topeka city limits. No aviation experience, airport management expertise, finance credentials, or infrastructure background is required.

Here is a side-by-side comparison based on public records, LinkedIn/professional profiles, board minutes, news coverage, and official bios:

Key Takeaways for Taxpayers

• Aviation-specific expertise is extremely limited. Only Samuel Sutton has direct flying/pilot experience. No board member has professional airport management, FAA Part 139 compliance, large-scale FBO operations, or commercial aviation finance experience.
• Strengths are in adjacent fields: Engineering/infrastructure (Armstrong), banking/legal/risk (Munson), small-business/transportation operations (Cortez), and community/economic development (Odupitan). These are valuable civic skills but do not substitute for specialized airport operations knowledge.
• No statutory or public vetting for technical qualifications. Appointments appear driven by civic leadership, political connections, and community involvement rather than proven airport or complex public-authority management experience.
• This pattern aligns with the broader issues documented in this report: an appointed board levying $5.28 million in annual property taxes while overseeing $12.18 million in 2026 expenditures, chronic operating losses, personnel costs of $5.5 million, prolonged litigation (MTAA v. Rural Development Corp. with forensic metadata issues), and the judgment.

A private real-estate management company charging a standard 5% fee on MTAA’s $3.945 million non-tax income would generate only $197,262 in revenue and keep operating expenses under $140,000 — yet MTAA’s actual costs are 87 times higher, subsidized by your taxes.

Conclusion: The current board brings civic commitment, but the lack of aviation/airport-specific qualifications underscores why the appointed structure enables opacity, inefficiency, and taxpayer exposure. This is why privatization (or expanded private FBO contracting) or an elected board (or both) is urgently needed to bring professional expertise and direct voter accountability.